desperate for change

I have been reading some books about trading, especially on options. I think that I have a fair understanding on why it is hard to make money with options. Not only do you have to be correct about picking which stock will go up, your gains have to overcome the cost premium of the option itself.

(If you don’t understand options or trading, I’ll point you to the usual source of knowledge and wisdom.)

There are different ways to participate in the market. Heck, even with regular stock purchasing, you can invest for the long-term, or you can day-trade the trends. And yes, there is less margin for errors with the day trading: you could be down after coming back from your coffee break if you are trading a stock you don’t know well.

The hard thing about trading is that you could be totally be doing the “right” thing and still come out with less money.

I have one fanatic reader that has been giving suggestions to me about how I can make my posts more interesting. One suggestion in particular is that I should let my audience get to know me better through my writings.

I think that I am usually reserved and private so the idea of putting myself out there is not an easy one to embrace. Here goes anyways – five ideas that I have been thinking about recently:

1. Startups – Instead of trying to do something original and wacky, try doing something that everyone will use. Specifically, I should think about dull, boring but useful applications. The market is big enough to support Yet Another Version of whatever you are doing. Just look at the success of 37signals – their products are the epitome of dull, boring but useful. (Don’t get me started about how Ruby on Rails makes everything sexier.)
2. Options – I remember looking at options trading about 5 years ago but then decided against it at the time. My rational at the time was that there didn’t seem like there was enough trading volume or interest and there was a pretty large spread. However, things seem to have picked up enough to warrant another look.
3. Trading – I am currently reading My Life as a Quant by Emanuel Derman. A pretty geeky read but quite interesting. One of the things that he likes to write about is the difference between the traders and the quants (quantitative analysts). Traders has all these tools to help them with the decisions, but ultimately it takes a lot of guts to pull the trigger to actually make the correct trade.
4. Career – The other recurring theme of My Life as a Quant is the idea of an evolving career. He started out as a physicist, then moved briefly into a programmer role in the C and UNIX heydays, and then finally as an analyst on Wall Street. While the decisions for the transitions were not necessarily deliberate plans, sometimes fate whispers things in your ear to guide you to where you should go.
5. Time Management – An exercise that I once did was to analyze where the 24 hours of a day go. I probably could have skipped watching 1.5 hours of TV without drastically affecting my quality of life (Futurama, Pinky and the Brain, Naruto). Then again, you need to have a bit of R&R now and then.

I am not sure where I really am at these days. I sure wish that fate would whisper just a little louder for me.